


Flavors of the Rani

by ashurbadaktu



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Drabble Collection, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 23:19:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashurbadaktu/pseuds/ashurbadaktu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of drabbles on the Rani, with various keywords for each one.  Mostly character pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Caring

Her fingers twitched when he called her 'callous'.

It was shortsightedness, the mark of a mind unused to subtleties of thought and motive. Privately, she thought it must be a side effect of all his time with humans, those Companions he carted about everywhere who seemed so ready to read things as black or white, dark or light, good or evil.

It had fueled in her a desire to do two things: strangle him into a sensible regeneration and bring him to her TARDIS. Perhaps one after the other, if she could get the Master to stop with his foolishness.

_Callous_.

She would show him the green houses she kept, each specimen the pride of its species, healthy and lush and full, the colors bright and dazzling. She would show him the ecosystems she'd constructed, the creatures she kept, some that existed nowhere else anymore but inside her space traveler. She would show him the works she'd done, what she'd created through bioengineering and refined through various chemical treatments: wonders, even if they could only be seen through a microscope.

And in all these things, she sought their potential, the potential ignored by time and space, by the whims of Fate and the Time Lords both.

_Callous_.

He cared about one planet, one species, occasionally more than his own. Then called _her_ callous.

She wished. Then, perhaps, she wouldn't care that he did.


	2. Obedient

At the age of eight, she'd walked proudly to the Untempered Schism and looked into the full power of Time and Space. It terrified her for only a moment before she realized it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever see. They'd told her to go and she'd gone.

She'd walked proudly into the Prydonian Academy and taken in the weight of ages, the history and destiny and triumph of the Time Lords in this place of learning and innovation. It terrified her for only a moment before she realized that this was her place, that she would make it her own and add to that brilliant legacy her own genius in a thousand different ways that made her mind spin and an unassuming smile curl on her face. They'd told her to go and she'd gone.

She'd walked proudly into the court, into that place of supposed justice. It terrified her for only a moment before she realized what was happening, what had to happen, what had been coming for years as she'd risen in her field, made her enemies through nothing more than talent and determination and a singleminded ruthlessness that demanded her to explore, to know, to create, to change. They'd told her to go and she'd gone.

She'd walked proudly into her TARDIS, into the only home she'd have anymore, into her space traveler that would bring her the stars. It terrified her for only a moment before she realized that she was, in a way, free of her name and their judgement and their society, free of everything that had restricted her and belittled her and stood in the way of her work, the progress, the exploration.

They'd told her to go and she'd gone.


	3. Naughty

"You didn't have to hit me," he said.

"You didn't have to make that joke about the cat again," she pointed out in reply. He started to argue, but she leaned down and put his mouth to better use. When he moved to deepen the kiss, she pulled away, her mission accomplished.

"You always do that."

"It always works."

"You're almost worse than Magnus," he said in irritation.

Her green eyes perked in amusement, her eyebrows arched and a crooked grin curled on her lips.

"Is _that_ so?"

"That certainly isn't how I mean."

"Then say what you mean," she prompted him.

"Tyrant," he accused after a moment.

"Certainly not," she replied. "I have a reason for everything I do and all of them make perfect logical sense."

He looked at her skeptically.

"This?"

She smirked and kissed him again, a light brush and nothing more.

"That doesn't mean I'll explain it to _you_."


	4. Book Reading

Her hand came down almost too fast on top of his and the Doctor blinked at her.

"I am _trying_ to read," she said, her voice indicating that she was quite at the end of her patience and more than willing to take action if he should push any farther.

"But Ushas--"

"But nothing," she continued, not turning from her text. "I'm not in the mood to help you undo the mess you've made of your chemistry work. If you and that other idiot weren't so busy making time flow analogues and mucking one another up, you wouldn't need my help in the first place."

"But Ushas--"

She turned, livid, her eyes narrow and hard... until she noticed what he had in his _other_ hand.

"_That_ is a bribe."

The Doctor smiled the smile that would become his only constant over the centuries and looked down at the vial of euphonium chips he held between thumb and finger.

"Is it?"

She swiped it out of his hand, her text forgotten.

"All right then," she finally acquiesced. "Show me what you've done with it."


	5. Kick-Ass

She had to hold him tightly with her legs, but once she'd worked out the mechanics of it the first time, the second time was easy enough.

"The both of you," she grumbled, yanking him up from the ground. He was well-tied, his arms strapped behind him and his legs shackled only a foot apart. With a smirk, she frogmarched him through the hallway like that, rushing him just a little but also making sure he didn't trip. The Master turned his head to say something over his shoulder, some pithy remark she didn't feel like answering, so she shoved him forward.

"Not a word!" she snapped, planting her boot on his backside as the door slid open. The room's other occupant, who was similarly tied and currently sitting on the other end of the room, started to get up, but she made sure to kick the Master _in_ before the Doctor could get _out_.

Then the door was closed.

The two of them looked at one another for a moment, their mouths about to open in the opening volley of their usual tirades when a voice rang out in the room, imperious and annoyed.

_"I have had **quite** enough of your ridiculous squabbling. **The universe at large** has had enough of your ridiculous squabbling. Resolve your differences or you'll starve to death; the door is sealed shut and won't be opening any time soon. Good day, Doctor. Good day, Master."_

_Bugger **that**,_ they both thought, _I'll just--_

_"Oh, just **try** and escape. It'll be much more amusing to watch."_

_Bloody hell_, they both thought.

And really, that was the point, now, wasn't it?


	6. On Her Knees

"Ow!"

She hit him again with the quantum wrench.

_"Ow!"_

"Then _move_ if it hurts so much," she snapped as she fought the g-forces that were holding her tightly to the wall. She'd managed to creep down to the ground to open up the panel, but turning was proving difficult. The Master wasn't helping things either; while he could have tried to push her into position to work on the panel and get them _stopped_, mostly he was whining.

She wasn't even hitting him that hard. It wasn't _possible_ to hit him that hard. She was quite sure he was just doing it to irritate her.

"Are you almost done, you stupid woman?"

"What do you think, you ignorant fool?!" she snapped in reply before getting her arm into the mechanisms. The velocity regulator should be right here and--

The TARDIS bucked, shuddered, and--

"Not _one word._"

And because her teeth _were_ so very close to his crotch, the Master was smart enough not to actually say anything about the fact. After all, there are just some things you'd rather not go without for a regeneration.

"Fair enough."


	7. Parental

When she'd taken the ring from the flames, she hadn't really considered what she might do with it. Bring the idiot back, of course; there were precious few Time Lords left that she could let him be obstinant for no reason other than to irritate the Doctor. But the amount of responsibility--

She'd grown him a new body, of course. And of course it was a full-grown adult with as much Gallifreyan DNA as she could engineer without causing mutations or defects; there hadn't been any DNA samples available from his remains, or any data within the ring that held his Time Lord essence. But even with a perfectly grown body and his true self protected within the ring, it took time to integrate the two properly.

The careful bodily control of a Gallifreyan was impossible in the body provided him, unfortunately; as such, he'd had to learn which functions he could control and which he couldn't and deal with those that would act as they wished. The muscles had been similarly troublesome: she could grow flesh, but she couldn't exercise it suitably and he'd had to do some considerable work to get the body up to snuff and as functional as he liked it. The knowledge of language was undamaged, but it took some time to train his mouth to it; longer even than adjusting to a new voice and teeth and tongue.

It took a year.

She'd never wasted one so well.


	8. Exploring

Without the Time Lords, the universe was a different place.

For the most part, everything was as it had been. There were no massive upheavals, no cataclysmic explosion to change the position of galaxies on end. One planet was gone, one people was missing; that is all. And yet, the universe was an entirely different place.

Time moved differently. More erratic, less smooth. She couldn't decide, even knowing what she did, if their destruction was the cause of the change or just the herald of it. If, like a TARDIS getting on in years, the first major hitch in the mechanisms of the universe was the beginning of the end. If, for reasons that never quite made sense, after that first malfunction, more were invariably on the way and things would never be completely right again.

It struck her as the grossest sort of egomania to assume that the Universe needed the Time Lords. To her mind, the Universe had been better for their presence but their presence, like all other kinds of life, was not _necessary_. It had gotten along without them just fine before they'd come about and it would get along after as well. A garden untended wouldn't grow to the gardener's plans, but neither would it wither to dust.

But it was _different_.

And because it was different, different in a way that went past cool logic and scientific fact, beyond anything she could quantify, she decided to explore it. She put down her work, picked up her albeit shallow roots, and she set her course for the Kasterborous system to start from, well, the closest thing to the beginning she could ascertain.

It was the only honest way, she never actually thought, that she could mourn.


	9. Shocked

If she hadn't been interested, hadn't been tuned in to the both of them as it happened, she wouldn't have even noticed. The Doctor and the Master. The Master and the Doctor. They played their games and she, being who she was, ignored their childishness unless pulled in or, in a rare show of desperation, she needed one of them. But they were strangely constant, another timeclock of the universe. Even as they were irregular, they _were_. It was better than most things managed.

And then it happened.

And she dropped the vial she'd been working on, nearly losing her shoe to the enzymes she'd been developing for the last seven years. She would have cursed if she'd even noticed but for the first time in her entire life, she was too shocked to actually care about her work. How could-- he'd-- they'd--

She almost fell over as she started _laughing_.

Her hands slid on the surface of the counter, the other finally finding purchase one one of the handles attached to a drawer. She used them both to hoist herself up again even as the mirth (she refused to call them 'giggles') shook through her at a more sedate pace.

A moment's examination had her sighing and starting to pick up the mess.

_I'll have to remind him of that little stunt the next time he insists he isn't a fairy. **Theta**-bell indeed._


	10. Alcohol

When you're the chemist of the group, your friends invariably end up asking you for things. And regardless of location, regardless of civilization, regardless of anything... it's always the sort of things they're not supposed to have.

Like wine.

She'd been working on an assignment when she'd started the branch of research that had allowed her to discover a method of fermenting which only took a night to produce a drinkable alcohol, but the result had been atrocious, utterly unpalatable. It took her longer to augment the process for any reasonable use, but she was rather proud when she finished the first bottle of schlenk blossom wine.

It still tasted foul, but they'd toasted their achievements with it and no one had said anything because the novelty had taken precedence over the actual experience.

But in between her assignments, she'd continued tweaking the process; no one had said anything, of course, but it hadn't mattered. _She'd_ known that it tasted awful and that meant that she still had work to do. So she'd worked.

The next time they'd insisted she make them up a bottle, it had been much smoother, slightly sweeter, and had an undercurrent of lushberries that had had them all asking her how she did it, what her secret was.

She'd smiled at that, smug and satisfied, and slapped Koschei's hand before he even thought of grabbing for her datapad. The request for the next bottle had come much sooner, another toast for another achievement, and she hadn't even minded that the achievement was just an excuse because they enjoyed it, enjoyed each other, enjoyed having something forbidden and delicious and just a bit toxic.

That's why there was a bottle in her TARDIS, one sealed with wax and a _Memento Mori_ blossom dried around the cork. The final bottle, the one that she'd declared perfect before pouring it into the dark glass as she'd smirked at Theta Sigma and held Koschei away with one foot and told Mortimus that the best things come to those who wait. The bottle that she'd decided to save for their grand reunion one day, the one they'd share when they were all ridiculously successful and could have gotten the finest vintages from all of Gallifrey if they wanted.

It had to be vinegar by now.

And most of the time, the Rani could pretend she didn't care.


	11. The First Time

She'd told him he wasn't welcome.

She'd lied through her teeth.

The face was different, the hair and the clothes and everything was different, of course, as regenerations do that and it'd been so very long but the _eyes_, more specifically the mind behind them--

It was the same. Ever the same.

She'd sneered, her lip curling into a shape she hadn't bothered with for centuries when it was another set of lips, a slightly different set, and her eyes had flattened with seeming irritation.

She'd looked him over.

Ever the weak chin, though she couldn't speak as her own was almost too severe, but covered well with a goatee that only accentuated the malevolent peaks and curves of his features. Lips that twisted as easily as hers did, as cruely as hers could. Eyes that shone, with madness and fervor and hunger and anger and all those emotions she had seen on a thousand faces but never so aptly as they did on him.

She'd told him to go so that he would stay. She'd ignored him with callous ease so that he would prod and poke and question. She'd snarled at him so that he would laugh at her. She'd let him take her things so that she had an excuse. She'd done what he asked so that it would feel like it used to.

The first time she saw Koschei again after her exile, it was like breathing. Without her pills, rough and difficult and easily remedied. And like taking her pills, she waited until the last moment.

And like taking her pills, she'd loathed him afterwards for making her feel weak in the first place.


End file.
